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Cary Sherburne:  Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com, and I’m here with Val Digiacinto, who is the Vice President of Interactive Services for the Ace Group, which is the DG3 Company now.  Did I get that right?

Val Digiacinto:  Yes it is.  Well, it was close.  It’s Interactive Solutions, but it was same… same type of stuff.  

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, so you were recently acquired by the DG3 Group, which originated as Cunningham Graphics years ago, right? 

Val Digiacinto:  Yes.  And it’s been… it’s been terrific actually.  I mean, it’s, you know, we were just talking about his yesterday.  That it almost felt like it was a natural progression to where we’ve come.  I think the, you know, there’s always a little apprehension about going through these kinds of changes, but the company has made it extremely comfortable to move in and feel like we’ve been a part of the family all along.  Tom Saggiomo is the CEO/President and he’s just done a terrific job of making that happen along with his team.  They’ve really planned for this and they did it well, and I think it’s working extremely well.  

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, and I was really surprised when I heard about it because you know, I always thought… 

Val Digiacinto:  Me too.  

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, right, right.  I always saw the Ace Group as kind of a thought leader in our industry, I mean, you’ve been doing terrific things, way ahead of everybody else, like with QR Codes, I mean, you had one of the first, shall we go back that far chroma presses?  

Val Digiacinto:  And you know…

Cary Sherburne:  And the scars to show it… 

Val Digiancinto:  And working with HP for so many years, I mean it really we’ve been through the process and that thought leadership and technology advantages that we’ve had throughout the years is really what’s allowed us to maintain who we are and what we’ve become throughout the years.  We’ve been in business since 40 years and as you know, we started at Ace Typographers.  So those core business changes I think helped us today to understand how quickly you have to change to adapt to change.  

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, so when you look at the combination then, what do you bring to them and what do they bring to you?  

Val Digiancinto:  I… well obviously for us, it was, I think we’ve hit almost a ceiling in growth potential, you know, it requires a lot of effort and… 

Cary Sherburne:  Investment.  

Val Digiancinto:  Investment into the process and we had put a lot into it and we really put our… Ace Group has become pretty much the country’s leader in that QR Code solution provider.  And it really has worked out extremely well for us.  DG3 saw the capabilities of what we were bringing to that table and came together and put through the acquisition.  What we get out of it the most is technology, and capital, and even more importantly, people because of the assets that they bring to the table.  And DG3 had already has an interactive solutions group   They’ve been moving in this direction, but I think we give them another jump start on the process.  So I think it’s just a perfect solution… timing is everything.  We were peaking and they needed… I believe they saw that as an opportunity for both them and for us and it just works.  

Cary Sherburne:  Great.  

Val Digiancinto:  I think understanding that the change process was leading us to this all along, as I mentioned, and not that we had our… the plans of things to stay in business long enough to be acquired, but it just feels right at this point and I think everybody, including Tony Vince Gagliardi, the owners, their dad started in business in 1970, and I think it just all worked just at the right time.  

Cary Sherburne:  And so you’re still maintaining the Manhattan operation? 

Val Digiancinto:  The Manhattan operation and the name of the company is important as well, it’s the Ace Group, a DG3 Business.  We have a sales operation in Manhattan, we’ve moved all of our production into Jersey City, which as you know, their prime location in the United States.  And as you know, we are an international company which brings a whole other level of assets to us certainly as well.  

The coolest thing is when you open the doors at DG3 and the assets that we have available to us now as well.  And we got that merger that brings together of all those assets to us and it’s just wonderful to see all the printing capability and all the finishing capability that we have available that we struggled with, I think at times, trying to offer to our clients as a full service organization.  And now it’s just there. 

Cary Sherburne:  It’s just there.  

Val Digiancinto:  So this is going to be very interesting over the next couple of months. 

Cary Sherburne:  Yeah, we’ll be watching.  It’ll be interesting to see how it all rolls out. 

Val Digiancinto:  I look forward to come back and tell you how wonderful things are going in the future as well.  

Cary Sherburne:  Great.  All right, Thanks Val.  

Val Digiancinto:  Thanks a lot.  

 

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